The Start and End of a Beautiful Friendship
by Alex the Anachronistic
Summary: Ilsa and Laszlo are safely off to Lisbon. Rick is staying in Casablanca. However, now he has more purpose, more vitality. He wants to help win the war against the Germans. Sequel to the movie of Casablanca.
1. Prologue: Getting Back the Americain

The Start and End of a Beautiful Friendship

_Well, this is the first time I've ever written a fanfiction for a movie with no book. I don't expect many reviews on this piece (not that many of my works have been inordinately successful before this) but it should be satisfying to me. I never can stand it until the angst-ridden, heart-broken characters are good and dead. Not that I dislike them. No, I like them immensely. But there had to have been something after Casablanca, really. I'm surprised that no one has made a sequel to it yet in the commercial movie industry. Even more surprised that there is so little under the ' Casablanca' tab on Here is my addition. May it be a long and good one. Oh, I didn't write Casablanca. I am not affiliated in any way with it except through this FANfiction. Etc., etc. Have a nice day, don't pester me with your bastard lawyers! _

The beads of the Blue Parrot jangled conversationally, and the portly Signor Ferrari almost had a heart attack.

"You've not left?"

A grinning Rick Blaine met his gaze, though the other man's expression might also have doubly coined as a 'sad smile.'

"Not yet, Ferrari."

One. Two. Three slow paces to the table at which the squinting Spaniard rested. But was he really Spanish? Rick had never been able to tell.

"I want my saloon back."

The words, spoken so decisively and precisely, cut through the usual hubbub of the café like a sword thrust into the blazing sand of the Sahara.

"I do not know," the broader man suggested, resting a thick finger on his chin, "That it can be arranged."

One. Two. Three bills with an impossible sum printed on each soon lay on the table.

"Every cent you gave me. Now you know I hate to be an Indian-giver, Ferrari, but every man's got to have a livelihood."

Ferrari grimaced. "So you are not leaving Casablanca? You will stay in Morocco?"

With a shrug of his shoulders, Blaine nonchalantly replied. "Why not?"

"But what of Laszlo? What of the lady?"

"Out of my life again, where they ought'a be."

Sighing, Ferrari closed his eyes. "I will not be manipulated. You sold to me your very good saloon, and I am keeping it under my eye. If you want it back, well . . . that is your problem."

Click-clock. Ferrari's brows shot up the front of his face as he realized a pistol pointed at his quite ample stomach.

"Give me the deed, Ferrari. And don't think I wouldn't shoot you." Not that he would, of course. That would come to be a total of two shootings to cover up in one night, and Louis would not appreciate the gesture. But Rick was not about to say anything to that accord in front of the other man.

Just as he suspected, Ferrari was the type to squirm.

"Let us not now be so rash, Rick. You say you want the deed, but I did not say I should not give it to you." The wealthy, corpulent man now shivered with fear.

"Hold the double negative, Ferrari, and maybe you got a deal."

"Here is the deed!" The Moorish Spaniard reached in his pocket and threw a thick wad of folded paper on the table.

The gun went back in Rick's pocket, but only after the deed preceded it.

"Well, so long. Nice doing business with you."

With as much, Rick strolled out of the café, apparently without a care in the world. Ferrari could almost hear the smirking whistling of his rival.

"Damn it!"

Ferrari threw his cap to the ground.

_Whoa. That was . . . short. Ok, so it was a prologue. Please leave a review if you read. Cheers! _


	2. Land in Spain

**Chapter 2 **

DISCLAIMER: It stinks that I have to have a disclaimer. Anyways, I don't own Casablanca or MGM or anything affiliated with the movie or anything. I'm a FAN writing FAN fiction. Have fun getting around that, stupid lawyers!

_I've decided that this story is not going to be one of my better works. I've made so many attempts to start long dramatic novels, and have so many on my front burners right now that I am hesitant even to continue this right now. However, I think that if I keep working on this to a minimum and accept short chapters, I might end up not becoming too involved in it and still keep at the forefront of my mind my other, more important works. So just a warning, this isn't my best tale, nor do I intend for it to be so. Just don't have enough time. _

Ilsa gazed at the cliché patchwork and mazes of fields hundreds of feet below them. The tiny windows in the plane were just enough to prevent her from suffering of claustrophobia. Her rightful husband by law, Victor Laszlo, snored peacefully in the seat immediately beside. A good thing he could not, in his state of _endormi_, that he would not witness the few tears caressing his divinely beautiful wife's face.

Where was the plane headed? Ilsa could scarce remember. She had a vague memory of the few past hours, quite hazy in her mind. How had they come to be in the plane in the first place? Oh, yes. Richard had stealthily arranged it. Against her own will, of course. He had needed to do the thinking for them both. Dear Richard! Clever Richard! Wonderful Richard!

Oh, alas! A slight heaving of her frail chest accompanied the remembrance that, likely, she would never see the man again! In all probability, either he or she would die in the war. Less likely to be Richard, though; more likely to be her. After all, being attached to Victor Laszlo did not mean much to the Gestapo. It meant more than much; it meant a tremendous deal. Richard . . . oh, Richard just had his silly little café. He'd go on living, go on loving, go on caring. He'd get over her soon enough. He'd find himself a lovely little wife, perhaps musing over a sentence or two's obituary to Victor Laszlo and his wife. (The papers would cover it better, of course, if the Germans did not regulate everything printed within Morocco by that time.)

A harsh blow came to her forehead, and Ilsa wondered how her hand had raised without her knowledge. But the brief motion had brought some clarity to her mind. Delicately, she placed two fingers on either side of her temple, a few inches before her ears. It encouraged her brain to bring a terminus to the confusion and opacity, a good thing. She hated to feel like a valetudinarian.

With a low rumble, the plane hastened to make its descent. Had they arrived? And where, pray? All Ilsa knew was that, wherever they were, it wasn't in Morocco. She was glad of the fact they had left the poor, decrepit, impecunious country where she felt inclined to dole out her every franc to stray children donned in rags. This bravado was greatly frowned upon by Victor, of course, since they had so little money themselves.

That, she realized, was something she could not understand about Victor. He endeavored to work for the people, he spent all his time and energy in politics and writing his treatises against Hitler's regime and such. But when it came to money, there was not a man who liked to hoard his as much as Victor. "When peacetime comes, we'll be wanting it" he said, whenever Ilsa had a particular personal expenditure to make. He seemed confident that they would actually reach peacetime. Ilsa did not share such hope, but said nothing pessimistic on that point to her husband. She might affect him, and he, in turn, could affect the masses with a single word, so she saw the danger of instilling a lack of hope into him.

The stentorian engines finally receded to a low grinding noise, and the captain came to awake the passengers.

"We're having to stop here for right now," the plump-faced Frenchman kindly stated in his native language, though his face seemed a bit beyond worried. "We have gotten reports that the port we intended to drop at has been swarmed by the Gestapo. We are instead pausing here in a safe base of Spain for a time. We shall continue to England in the morning."

"What? Good man, what, pray, is the matter?" Laszlo, though half asleep as the pilot made this pronouncement, in an instant came to understand all. "Why the deuce did you not tell us this before we landed? Lord!" Victor stood, shaking out his legs in an almost inimical manner.

"We did not wish to disturb your august personages with such trifles . . ." muttered the pilot, becoming more agitated by the moment.

"Leave off your flummery!" demanded Laszlo, as awake and active as if he had taken a bucket-load of coffee unseen by Ilsa or the pilot. "Next time, alert me if there is to be any change in plan. I would have told you, in the event that we were required to take a diversion, it's not Spain we would head to. Austria's got some very safe areas still untouched by _them" _(He almost spat at the mere allusion to the Germans) "and I would have told you to head there. But no matter. As long as we are currently in a safe position, I'm satisfied."

"Then come," the pilot gave a curt bow and beckoned to the door. "I hear the chef at this base is very good. And I am very hungry, myself, so let us not hesitate to make away with the meal provided for us."

Ilsa and Victor rose from the stiff leather seats, hands automatically intertwining.

"Excellent, I'm starved," Ilsa's husband declared openly.

As they walked down the ramp, the pilot kept at a respectful distance ahead of them. Laszlo took the opportunity to whisper carefully in an undertone, as though he had been thinking about this speech the entire plane ride: "My dear, I know you grieve for Blaine. I'm sorry it was one-sided. You should have someone in your life who can just . . . love you entirely. I know that, often, I devote much of my love to the people of Europe who deserve it. Too much, I'd agree, if you said such a thing. But know that I simply cannot live without you, even when I'm too preoccupied to pay you the attention you need. I pain that you are sad for him, but life is life. You are my wife, and we are bound under God's great love. Try to enjoy it as much as you can. Maybe you can split the love you feel for Blaine with the people, alongside me?"

Ilsa stopped, one foot paused in midair as the entire speech accosted her ears. "I feel nothing for Richard Blaine" she lied effortlessly. With a fluent movement, her lips approached Victor's ear-level and kissed them each. "I . . . I adore you."

Oh, to be a woman, to be a liar, to be a _femme fatale_!

_

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_Main point: REVIEW PLEASE! _


	3. Rick's Underground

_It sucks that I have to have a disclaimer. Ok. I don't own Casablanca. I am not affiliated with MGM. nor do I make any claim to be. Fan writing FAN fiction. Enough said._

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**Chapter 3 **

Rick sat with the man with whom he had started a beautiful friendship the day before, Captain Louis Renault.

"It was a near thing," expressed Louis, elated, "But we managed it! _Un ami_, we are a pair of devils at best!"

"Oh, certainly," agreed Rick a bit cynically. "You wouldn'ae think that, if another scapegoat was provided, they would cease to follow the trail. Though it was a great idea to change Ugarte's death records so that it appeared that _he _did it. Such a slithery character as him deserves a bit of revenge on the men responsible for his own death."

"The idea was to pin it on a man we both knew to be dead," replied Louis, though with a tad bit of irritation. He snapped up a choice bottle of liquor from Rick's stock in the saloon and poured a glass. "Any for yourself? Or are you still going to pursue that notion of becoming a 'teetoller'?"

"I might go back on it later, so don't hold it against me just yet, but I think I will. Man oughta keep a clear head. Gimme a bottle o' water instead, if you would."

Louis brought out the requested non-alcoholic beverage with the sympathetic clicking of the tongue. "My wife used to tell me I should do the same."

"What happened to her?"

"Dead giving birth to our first, which ended up a mere still."

A dismal sound of gently crunching straw as Louis sat on the barman's stool was the only thing to break the silence.

"Sorry 'bout that. But I don't have much experience with wives."

"Not your fault." Louis downed his wine a bit more hurriedly than could be considered healthy. "She was a dreadful . . . what do you call it . . . 'nag'. She constantly never had any good to say to me."

Louis assumed a horrible falsetto as he imitated his wife's voice: "'Oh, Louis, I have a terrible fever, I think I should see the doctor.' 'Oh, Louis, we are out of bread for supper, would you step out and buy some?' 'Oh, Louis, are you late _again?_ For the lord's good sake, you should be getting more sleep.'" Grimly, he smiled and resumed speech in normal tones. "Ah, but women, they I can do something without. She never understood that a good Frenchman _likes _to drink." He poured himself a bit more of the choice wine and swirled it meditatively.

Rick leaned back a bit to survey the captain. "Is that why you came to Morocco a decade ago? To escape her memory?" 

"A bit, yes," replied Renault, grudgingly. "But mind you shall never repeat that. I am not of the sort to go about spreading tales, though, and I do not believe you are, either. We shall get on splendidly, Rick."

They sat for some time, Rick occasionally sipping his mineral water, and Louis swallowing large sums of dark merlot.

"Say though, Louis," Rick suggested slowly, "I'd like to do something more for the war than just sit here and pin my own murders on poor awful little men like Ugarte. Maybe do something that could get my own self in trouble, if I felt like it. You reckon I could do something like that?"

"Depends," Renault murmured through a gulp. "You'd want to go out or stay in?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, you might act as a secret agent, going about killing and stealing and a manner of similar feats for the Allies. Or, you could be like Laszlo, organizing the people and such from the comfort of your own home or train corridor. Either one, we could surely use. And you'd be a good man for the job, though I should hate to lose you so soon."

Rick chewed this over for a moment. "I don't want to die."

"You've changed, I think."

"Yes."

They contemplated this. Louis was beginning to show signs of his intoxication, though he still retained moderate control over himself.

"You know what you could do, Rick?"

"What?"

A pause long enough for an ant to crawl up the bottle of wine ensued as Renault thought about how to phrase his suggestion.

"There is a safe place necessary for the meetings."

"Meetings of what?" Leave it to Rick to purposefully set people off ease with a lack of tact.

"You very well know, Rick."

Rick thought a moment.

"I could arrange that. Definitely."

And so Rick's Underground was born.

…………….

A month later, the basement to _Rick's Café Americain _had been finished. Rick and Renault admired the handiwork.

Rick had only employed the use of his loyal staff in the digging of the cellar. Sascha, Berger, Sam, and even Rick himself had worked with an inordinate fervor every day, taking turns, in order to complete it. The result was a twenty by twelve room accessed by a concealed panel placed behind a new grand piano that Rick bought for Sam.

The meetings could resume, undisturbed, and no one was the wiser.

The cellar became known as Rick's Underground, and did contain a few casks of aging wine in case the Germans did chance upon it. Though, of course, no one doubted that it could stand up to a raid any day.

_

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_Main point: REVIEW PLEASE! _


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